Ken Vandermark

Ken Vandermark (born September 22, 1964) is an American composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist.

He graduated in 1986 with a degree in English but focusing on cinema.

After graduation, he led or co-led groups (including Lombard Street and Mr. Furious) in Boston.

Compositions/arrangements for the Boston-based groups set the groundwork for and predicted approaches to recordings and live performances developed in Chicago.

Although a trio, Lombard Street incorporated "suite forms" characteristic of later arrangements for groups of both substantial and limited instrumentation.

Vandermark's "dedication pieces" are found first in Lombard Street performances, as in the case of "The Politics of Sound," which was dedicated to the musicians in Boston-based ensembles Shock Exchange, The Fringe, and the Joe Morris Trio.

Works performed by Mr. Furious, such as "Cold Coffee", include some of the most convincing early examples of Vandermark's signature free-ranging charts.

Developed further in Barrage Double Trio (e.g., "Agamemnon Sleeps") this simultaneously linear and episodic perspective on arrangement broadly has been the overarching architecture in most of his works for large-ensembles since that time.

Vandermark has lived in Chicago since autumn 1989.

Since then, he has performed or recorded with many musicians (including Hal Russell, Paal Nilssen-Love, Hamid Drake, Fred Anderson, David Stackenäs, Paul Lytton, Joe Morris, Ab Baars, The Ex, Mikolaj Trzaska, Marcin Oles, Waclaw Zimpel, Axel Doerner, Mats Gustafsson, Bartlomiej Oles, Wolter Wierbos, Joe McPhee, Zu, Peter Brötzmann, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Paul Lovens, Lasse Marhaug, Yakuza, Kevin Drumm, and members of Superchunk).

A fixture on the Chicago-area music scene since the 1990s, Vandermark has earned wide critical praise for his playing and his multilayered compositions, which typically balance intricate orchestration with passionate improvisation.

In the mid-1990s, Vandermark was known, in part, for his many collaborations with other musicians.

Some groups were ad hoc settings, while others were more stable.

He worked not only in jazz, but free improvisation, noise, rock and roll of various stripes, and other settings.

He first gained widespread attention while with the NRG Ensemble from 1992 to 1996.

He was once a member of Witches and Devils and the Flying Luttenbachers and has led or co-led several groups, including DKV Trio, Free Fall, Territory Band, CINC, Sonore, the Vandermark 5, the Free Music Ensemble, School Days, the Sound in Action Trio, Steam and Powerhouse Sound.

Perhaps Vandermark's main compositional vehicle, the Vandermark 5 released their first album in 1997.

Initial personnel were Vandermark, Mars Williams (saxophone), Jeb Bishop (trombone and electric guitar, though the latter was gradually phased out), Kessler (bass) and Tim Mulvenna (drums).

The Joe Harriott Project, a brief celebration of Harriott in 1998 in the Chicago area, consisted of Ken Vandermark (reeds), Jeb Bishop (trombone), Kent Kessler (bass), and Tim Mulvenna (drums).

The band played the music of Joe Harriott, transcribed and arranged by Vandermark.

Vandermark won the Cadence magazine poll in 1998 for best artist and best recording.

He was a finalist for the 1998 Herb Alpert Fellowship.

He has led or been a member of many groups, has collaborated with many other musicians, and was awarded a 1999 MacArthur Fellowship.

He plays tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and baritone saxophone.

He was also a member of NRG Ensemble.

Vandermark grew up in Massachusetts, graduating from Natick High School.

His father, Stu Vandermark, was the Boston correspondent for Cadence Magazine and currently is a noted essayist on jazz, primarily concerned with improvisation.

Vandermark led a jazz trio, the Fourth Stream, in Montreal while he was an undergraduate at McGill University.

In 1999 Vandermark was awarded a $265,000 MacArthur Fellowship, a prize then awarded on an age-based scale to creative leaders and meant to enable them to pursue their creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations.

The fellowship was controversial, due to Vandermark's relative youth and obscurity: he was 35 and known mostly in Chicago, while other jazz performers awarded the fellowship were older and better-known (e.g., Cecil Taylor, George Russell).

Due in part to wanting to focus more on his own compositions, Vandermark decided in about 2000 to limit his collaborations.

Vandermark is one of the founders and members of Catalytic Sound, a cooperative of musicians that publishes their own recordings.

Composed of drummer Hamid Drake, bassist Kent Kessler, and Vandermark.

The group is active only irregularly, except for annual end-of-year concert(s) in Chicago.

In 2002 Vandermark recorded Furniture Music, his first released performances as an unaccompanied soloist.

After several years of Vandermark 5 performances of his arrangements of works by Sonny Rollins, Joe McPhee, Cecil Taylor, and others, Vandermark in 2005 announced, "Though I have learned a great deal by rearranging some of my favorite composers' work for the Vandermark 5, it's time to leave that process behind and focus more completely on my own ideas."

Vandermark is the subject of Musician (2007), one of a series of Daniel Kraus video documentaries on contemporary occupations.

However, in 2017 DKV played two tours, one with Joe McPhee, and in 2020 there was no end-of-year concert, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake, and bassist Nate McBride.

Originally devoted to interpretations of the music of Sun Ra and the P-Funk/George Clinton family, Spaceways Inc. later branched into versions of classic reggae songs as well as Vandermark originals.